Review of Tulpan (2009) by Pj P — 04 Mar 2010

I sometimes have a problem with alienation from the subject matter of movies. If I find movies about sections of the British lumpen proletariat problematical because I sometimes just donâ??t understand the cultural frame of reference â?? how then do I relate to the characters in Tulpan? Is Tulpan cinematography or ethnography? What in Godâ??s name do I know about Kazakhstan? Bugger all except that it has a president-for-life and rigged elections. Oh, and that lots of it is flat. Well I certainly know that itâ??s flat now. Tulpan is probably the most featureless feature Iâ??ve ever seen - not a tree, not a stream, just two yurts (not in the same place â?? nothing as proto-urban as a settlement of more than one yurt). There are lots of animals though â?? goats, horses, cats, donkeys, dogs, cattle, camels and, most of all, sheep. But one of the problems is that I spent so much of my time wondering what was going on, what everything was, that I found myself losing the plot. What the hell was the sister pounding in the tall cylinder thing? Where does â??comrade bossâ?? fit in? What are those round white things? Why are they put on the roof? Do ex Soviet sailors in Kazakhstan wear their old uniforms for best for the rest of their lives? What the hell is a sailor doing in Kazakhstan anyway? I mean, Switzerland is positively bloody coastal in comparison with Kazakhstan. How come they can simply splash water out of the bowser when the source is so distant that we never see it? What are the traditional marriage arrangements of Kazakhs? Where do they crap? Is this remotely or closely related to how Kazakhs think and behave? What is causing the lambs to be stillborn? And please, please, what do the wordâ??s of that bloody song mean?

When I was not thus distracted, I was able to discern a rather sweet story about the unrequited love of Asa, a young man whoâ??s done his conscript period in the mighty Soviet Pacific fleet, for, erâ?¦, a girl named Tulpan who he has never seen (sheâ??s seen him â?? his ears are too big). Itâ??s charming, and the heroâ??s reaction to helping the live birth of the lamb is as good a piece of movie-making as Iâ??ve seen recently. (Apparently Sergey Dvortsevoy adjusted the rest of the movie around the sheep nativity â?? not surprisingly, the sheep was only able to co-operate so much.) There are some other lovely bits too â?? like consoling Asa about his ears by showing him a photograph of a big-eared prince, Charles â?? â??is he an African prince?â?? â??No, an American prince.â?? Much like Prince Charles, Asa hopes to have his own flocks, wife and yurt one day. But it is not this day. An exhilarating if bewildering experience.